127 Comments

From Ross:
0435.txt, between Briffa and Cook. It’s Sept 2003, just weeks before MM2003 appeared.

Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about 100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all). Of course, none of what I have proposed has addressed the issue of seasonality of response. So what I am suggesting is strictly an empirical comparison of published 1000 year NH reconstructions because many of the same tree-ring proxies get used in both seasonal and annual recons anyway. So all I care about is how the recons differ and
where they differ most in frequency and time without any direct consideration of their TRUE association with observed temperatures.

And I like this bit
I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in
– Bradley hates it as well), but I am willing to offer to include them if they can contribute without just defending their past work – this is the key to having anyone involved.

And this from Briffa to Cook
You know I desperately want to produce a new temperature reconstruction from the various tree-ring data (and explore the Mann western US PC correction – though Malcolm has ignored my request for the data) .

Notice that: Briffa couldn’t get MBH98 data either, yet Mann would soon claim is was all publicly available

I do think that the Medieval Warm Period was a far more significant event
than has been recognized previously, as much because the high-resolution
data to evaluate it had not been available before. That is much less so the
case now. It is even showing up strongly now in long SH tree-ring series.
However, there is still the question of how strong this event was in the
tropics. I maintain that we do not have the proxies to tell us that now.
The tropical ice core data are very difficult to interpret as temperature
proxies (far worse than tree rings for sure and maybe even unrelated to
temperatures in any simple linear sense as is often assumed), so I do not
believe that they can be used alone as records to test for the existence of
a Medieval Warm Period in the tropics. That being the case, there are
really no other high-resolution records from the tropics to use, and the
teleconnections between long extra-tropical proxies and the tropics are, I
believe, far too tenuous and probably unstable to use to sort out this
issue.

So, at this stage I would argue that the Medieval Warm Period was probably
a global extra-tropical event, at the very least, with warmth that was
persistent and probably comparable to much of what we have experienced in
the 20th century. However, I would not claim (and nor would Jan) that it
exceeded the warmth of the late 20th century. We simply do not have the
precision or the proxy replication to say that yet. This being said, I do
find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event
to be grossly premature and probably wrong.

I think messages like this would also be used to talk-up the ‘non-lockstep’ nature of “The Team” and how they had legitimate give-and-take on points of contention.

Why no one deserves to see this sort of give-and-take in the literature seems to be beyond me.

There will be more blather out there for sure that will attempt to boil down any sort of intellectual disagreement into “the planet has been warming” vs “the planet has not been warming” whereas the real story is precisely in the details of these sorts of shared specifics that have run through the parallel world of unpublished ‘authentic dialogue’.

4758.txt: Tim Osborn: ” Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data ‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it! ”

2009.txt: Keith Briffa: ” I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions,”

3994.txt: John Mitchell (Met Office) on draft IPCC report: ” Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no. ”

1104.txt: Wanner: “I was a reviewer of the IPCC-TAR report 2001. In my review which I can not find again in its precise wording I critcized the fact that the whole Mann hockeytick is being printed in its full length in the IPCC-TAR report… I just refused to give an exclusive interview to SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science. “

Wanner (1104.txt) says that he “just refused to give an exclusive interview to SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.“ But in fact it would have caused enormous good to climate science, even if it may have damaged the advocacy agenda which “climate science” is often used to push for.

Yes, we are going to have fun with sea level in Paris. Actually I don’t think I’ve read that paper yet but we have a diagram already that shows the very large variability in decadal trends from tide-gauges. Personally, I suspect that the network is too sparse, so that the variability is to some extent measurement noise. It is so large we have no physical explanation for it.

“I was a reviewer of the IPCC-TAR report 2001. In my review…I critcized the fact that the whole Mann hockeytick is being printed in its full length in the IPCC-TAR report… I just refused to give an exclusive interview to SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science. “–Wanner

Looks like the damage had already been sone. Wanner missed instead an opportunity to save climate science from further damage. Unless ‘climate science’ has an altogether different meaning than we’d normally expect.

“I have cut the bit about the differences between Hadley and GISS, I think that is getting too complex. The change you mentioned that happened in 1990 could not explain why the 1998-2007 trend is so different between GISS and Hadley.”

Rahmstorf and the Medieval times

5039.txt

“You chose to depict the one based on C14 solar data, which kind of stands out in Medieval times. It would be much nicer to show the version driven by Be10 solar forcing, which fits your data very well.”

Rahmstorf explains use of truth

4358.txt

“And I also see your problem: what we are finding out now makes the IPCC process look somewhat unsophisticated back in 1990, so it is a diplomatic conundrum how to be completely truthful in reporting this, as we need to be as scientists, without providing the skeptics undue fodder for attacking IPCC.”

My overall impression of this batch is that it reinforces the sense of tribal behavior among the “team.” They share the belief that they are right and collaborate to promote the “cause,” as MM puts it so nicely. There is also a sense of bunker mentality; that they view themselves as under seige, and the wagons are circled to protect themselves, the “cause,” and even the IPCC. Their loyalties center on the cause and the IPCC as the embodiment of it. Even their critiques of each other or from the periphery seem aimed at purging deficiencies, certainly not at getting the right answer, whatever it may be.

“And I like this bit
I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in
– Bradley hates it as well)…”

Wow. That is the 2nd time that 2003 GRL paper has been mentioned.

Bradley: I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

“1) Keith didn’t mention in his Science piece but both of us
think that you’re on very dodgy ground with this long-term
decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale. What
the real world has done over the last 6000 years and what
it ought to have done given our understandding of Milankovic
forcing are two very different things. I don’t think the
world was much warmer 6000 years ago – in a global sense
compared to the average of the last 1000 years, but this is
my opinion and I may change it given more evidence.

2) The errors don’t include all the possible factors. Even
though the tree-ring chronologies used have robust rbar
statistics for the whole 1000 years ( ie they lose nothing
because core numbers stay high throughout), they have lost
low frequency because of standardization. We’ve all tried
with RCS/very stiff splines/hardly any detrending to keep
this to a minimum, but until we know it is minimal it is
still worth mentioning. It is better we ( I mean all of us
here) put the caveats in ourselves than let others put them
in for us.”

The outburst from Peter Thorne on the zero order draft of Chapter 3, AR4, IPCC, noted by Tallbloke in #1939, is also quoted in #1516 and in #4417. Highlights:

At 10:57 04/02/2005, you wrote:

Kevin, Phil et al.,
There is little effective communication in the main text of the uncertainty

What, rightly or wrongly, I get out of the current draft on an initial read is:

“We don’t like UAH. We don’t believe radiosondes over the satellite period, but do over the longer period (paradox). We believe Fu et al. is correct. There is no longer any problem whatsoever.”

I don’t think this simple message is actually remotely supported by the science. Therefore at the very least efforts are required to balance the text so that this is not the message communicated. I don’t think we should be scared of admitting that we just don’t know, if indeed we just don’t know (which I believe is a fair reflection of the state of the science).

So to state boldly that trends agree and therefore all is well is again our living in a fools paradise.

Common question 3.2. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I think this paints too rosy a picture of our understanding the vertical structure of temperature changes. Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest.

—————

I only found one other, rather mild, expression of uncertainty from Thorne, in #2903

Antarctic data first piqued my interest with the Science paper on raobs trends which was clearly non-physical but hard to nail down how wrong it was.

Its clear to me that Antarctica is a uniquely difficult environment to collect long-term homogeneous data in. So I have substantial doubts that all the manned station pegs in Steig et al. are adequate. Does this really matter? I’m not sure.

Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models, surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.
[…] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from the sun alone.

Jenkins/MetO:

would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?

Jones:

[tropical glaciers] There is a small problem though with their retreat. They have retreated a lot in the last 20 years yet the MSU2LT data would suggest that temperatures haven’t increased at these levels.

Steig:

He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.

Haimberger:

It is interesting to see the lower tropospheric warming minimum in the tropics in all three plots, which I cannot explain. I believe it is spurious but it is remarkably robust against my adjustment efforts.

Klein/LLNL:

Does anybody have an explanation why there is a relative minimum (and some negative trends) between 500 and 700 hPa? No models with significant surface warming do this

“7) Publish, retire, and don’t leave a forwarding address
Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I almost think I know to
be the case, the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit
about 100 year variability
was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).
Of course, none of what I have proposed has addressed the issue of seasonality of
response. So what I am suggesting is strictly an empirical comparison of published 1000
year NH reconstructions because many of the same tree-ring proxies get used in both
seasonal and annual recons anyway. So all I care about is how the recons differ and
where they differ most in frequency and time without any direct consideration of their
TRUE association with observed temperatures.

(Note: IIRC, this is the only time I have used the f-word on the net, then only because it’s in a quote. Actually, if you search Climategate for that word, you get to some contentious points fairly rapidly).

mentioned before in climategate 1.0 from Briffa, evidently a poster was positioned badly

‘on our web page. As others have said , the dating of the chronology in the Urals is not
wrong – but the magnitude of the extreme years in the early Urals reconstruction were not
adjusted to account for inflated variance related to low chronology replication – so they
are sort of right that the emphasis on 1032 is probably overdone.’

The decision as to how to make the warming appear as scary as possible, particularly in areas where there was no data or a the uncertainty was too large. I like like the bit about making the red darker.

“3. for the Smith-Reynolds temperature data set problem in the polar and data sparse
regions, we
can use the confidence value supplied with the data and set a confidence threshold for
whether we
use a particularly grid point trend value or make that grid point missing. Tom Smith is
looking at what the value should be and it will take a few weeks to work this out
properly.

For color one can also use semitransparent and lightly mask less confident areas rather
than wiping them out.”

[snip] I for one still believe that we are seeing the manifestation of greenhouse warming but I know the evidence presented todate leves many questions still unanswered . I too believe that solar variabilty is a potential forcing factor that has likely contributed to the variability of 19th and 20th century observations . The extent of the effect surely requires much more model-based research. Simply correlating Hoyt’s series against observations or reconstructed temperatures does not get us far. I also believe we have major uncertainty surrounding global or hemispheric estimates of centennial or millennial reconstructions , and real problems with spacial patterns on long timescales. Saying this does not make me an outlaw in the palaeo family – I hope! – just someone anxious to maintain our objectivity.

The truth is that all of this group are well aware of this and of the associated fact that even within each of these sub-disciplines e.g. Dendro, coral etc. there is a large range of value , or concern with the external usage of our data. However, my own and Phil’s concerns are motivated ,like yourself, by the outside world’s inability to appreciate these points and the danger that we will all be seen as uncritical or niave about the real value of proxy data. The rationale for the recent Jones et al paper, and some things that I have written in the past is to inform would be users , particularly the modellers, that there are critical questions to be addressed about how the palaeo-data are best used in a ‘detection’ or ‘model validation’ context. Many in the palaeo-community understand these issues , but perhaps there has been some reluctance to air them in sufficient depth or in the right situations where they will be heard/seen by those people who now seek to use the data . I believe that many of the modellers , having been blissfully unaware for years of the need to work with the palaeo-community, are now expecting too much . This carries the danger of a backlash as they undertake simple assessments of the palaeo-series and conclude that they are all of very little use. The problem is that as we try to inform them we may get the balance between valueable self criticism and scientific flagellation wrong. The more so when the whip is seemingly aimed at others!
There is no doubt though, that many palaeo- types are not concerned with the ‘bigger issues’ of climate change , so it is up to those who do ,such as this group, to try to sort out some sensible approach to how we do explore the good and bad ,fairly, in our collective data and how we present this to the outside world. The meeting you propose is a good way forward.If he is already not included, I also urge you to invite Ed Cook.
I hate cold feet and I don’t ski so I vote for anywhere away from snow.

To answer the question about the degradation in tree-ring chronology confidence back in time – yes, we ( that is several of us in tree rings , and rising out of them, in average temperature or rainfall series, have suggested a basis for quantifying chronology error as a function of series replication and time-dependent chages in the correlations of the series that go to form the mean chronology. The problem is tricky because the error is timescale ( i.e frequency) dependent also. This is just the chronology. Calculating confidence limits on reconstructions derived from one or more chronologies must take account of the regression error (again likely to be timescale dependent) while incorporating the additional uncertainty associated with the chronology. When the reconstructions are derived using a spatial transfer function ( such as in canonical correlation or our similar Orthogonal Spatial Regression technique )the reconstruction at each point in the predictand network has some ,different, uncertainty relating to the error in each predictor series and the magnitude of its influence in the specific regression equation relating to that point. Finally, as regards this issue, if you have detrended or high-pass filtered the original predictor series in some way (i.e. tree-ring standardisation) , you have some potential long-timescale uncertainty around the final reconstruction which can not be represented by any analyses of the remaining prdictors or their association with a relatively short instrumental predictand series. I have a half drafted paper on this which I intended to submit to Tree-Ring Bulletin – perhaps one day!

No, we knew these things all along. We just wish these folks would have stated these things in their papers/publicly. Instead we get this “Many in the palaeo-community understand these issues , but perhaps there has been some reluctance to air them in sufficient depth or in the right situations where they will be heard/seen by those people who now seek to use the data.”

I suppose you condone such reluctance to accurately portray the state of the science.

“Can you believe their penultimate paragraph? They wnat [sic] to redefine risk away from it’s classical definition as probability times consequence to just consequence. If that were reasonable then all human pursuits should now be directed to averting an asteroid collision–the worst imaginable consequence”.

“Also, I spoke to you about the problem of anthropogenic influences ( i.e. increased CO2 , nitrate fallout , increased UV radiation ) possibly having an influence on recent tree growth and so complicating our efforts to use these recent data to define how we interpret past tree growth. Is it possible to put in some reference to me worrying about this?”

“If Mike said that my calibration procedure is ‘flawed’, I will be extremely pissed off”

“In all candour now, I think that Mike is becoming a serious enemy in the way that he bends the ears of people like Tom with words like ‘flawed’ when describing my work and probably your and Keith’s as well. This is in part a vindictive response to the Esper et al. paper.

He also went crazy over my recent NZ paper describing evidence for a MWP there because he sees it as another attack on him. Maybe I am over-reacting to this, but I don’t think so.”

We’re not meant to editorialise but it seems obvious to me that both things are true. What’s not clear is the source of Mann’s power, from the earliest days since his PhD, that allows his bullying to be effective.

The purpose of this short message is to ask that you do not send my RAPID proposal to Mike Mann for refereeing.
…I am genuinely a little nervous as to whether Mike could remain sufficiently objective . We have had a debate (politely phrased) as to the merits of trying methods of data assimilation that are independent of his approach.

This, from Bishop Hill comments, deserves to be highlighted, in my view:

———-

4894 is interesting. From Alex Kirby at the BBC to Phil Jones if I have read it correctly, in the run up to COP-10 in 2004:

–

Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it clear that we think they are talking through their hats.

Reference to confidential document on tree-ring problems being circulated to CAs

2383.txt

Embedded exchange, Tim Barnett -> Gabi Hegerl

“If we are really going to get into the palaeo stuff, maybe someone(s) ought to have another look at Mann’s paper.

His statistics were suspect as I remember.

For instance, i seem to remember he used, say, 4 EOF predictors. But he prescreened them and threw one away because it was not useful. then made a model of the remaining three, ignoring the fact he had originally considered 4 predictors.

He never added an artificial skill measure to account for this but based significance on 3 predictors.”

Climate…do core samples and fossil records indicate that global warming was taking place when the dino’s roamed the earth???
Perhaps global climate change is more a natural cycle?
One more question. If the empowered of the world are really worried about clean energy why is hydrogen/Water energy almost completely ignored? The perpetuated belief that it is near impossible to produce an engine that runs on water is false and burning hydrogen is as safe as gasoline with zero emissions. Sure some will say that it is explosive when in fact it is more stable than gasoline. In fact the systems designed produce only what is being used by the vehicle no excess hydrogen storage tank.
Maybe the whole mess is more about power and control and alot less about clean energy. Just a thought from an average joe.

“I now have sufficient output to write up what I believe will be a very significant paper showing that growth has increased greatly during the 19th century – but perhaps more significantly it levelled off after the middle of the 20th century.

…

In one or two very restricted areas where we have long data (e.g. eastern Siberia ) the increase is unprecedented since 1200 or 1400 A.D.”

>PS. between you and me, I don’t think our new NH recon really adds
>anything new expect perhaps the fact that we should not put too much
>confidence in these recons prior to 1100 or so. After seeing Ulrich
>Cubasch’s talk on the 32 flavours of climate, I think the whole
>methodology is up in the air as well. Do you know if he has drafted a
>paper on this work yet?

4369.txt Ed Cook->Tim Osborn “I am afraid that Mike is
defending something that increasingly can not be defended. He is
investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science
move ahead.”

0076.txt Ed Cook->Gerard van der Schrier “I am afraid that the Dai data are looking
more and more unreliable. At some point, this will need to be brought
up to Dai. Of course, Trenberth will go nuts because his name is on
the publications associated with the data.”

2137.txt Tom Wigley->Mike Hulme “The Hadley people have clearly screwed things up,
but their “errors” don’t really matter given all of the uncertainties. I
didn’t mention this because I thought that opening up that can of worms
would confuse people even more.”

3234.txt Richard Alley->Ed Cook “If some of the
records, or some other records such as Rosanne’s new ones, show “divergence”,
then I believe it casts doubt on the use of joined tree-ring/instrumental
records, and I don’t believe that I have yet heard why this interpretation is
wrong.”

0071.txt Mike Mann->Richard Alley “I won’t try to defend Rosanne D’Arrigo’s analysis,
because frankly many in the tree-ring community feel it was not very good work.
You should be aware that her selection criteria were not as rigorous as those
used by other researchers, and the conclusions she comes to reflect only the
data and standardization methods she used–they don’t speak for many
other, in my mind, more careful studies.”

0248.txt Trenberth->Wigley ” The fact that we can not account for what is
happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as
we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!”

1593.txt Mann->Briffa “>…I do have a number of specific concerns mostly in
>> the area of discussions of where things actually now stand in terms
>> of some of the earlier criticisms. I believe that the discussion is
>> still out of date, given what has been shown in recent publications,
>> including Wahl and Ammann (Science). Also, and I don’t think this is
>> the only place you’re going to hear this from, there are deep
>> problems w/ Hegerl et al ’06, particularly the claims of what TLS can
>> do, which are egregiously incorrect. There is a comment in review in
>> Nature (not me, but I can promise you, by someone who understands the
>> statistical issues involved better than anyone else in our community)
>> that is very critical. I think its unwise for the TAR to
>> uncritically accept the claims made, particularly given that the
>> actual J. Climate paper was in limbo at least at the time the most
>> recent draft was finalized. I believe that disqualifies it for
>> consideration for AR4, no?”

So there is a lot of variability and just saying it is decadal variability doesn’t mean that we can forget about it ! Also putting this in a box doesn’t mean we know what is causing it.

My view is that we will never know. Is the influence stronger now because of anthro effects – who knows, it is a possibility but no more than that.

I also think that there is too much emphasis on the NAO (and SOI) and other factors become more important at times. There is some modelling work with volcanoes which says that the aerosols impact the stratosphere which then feeds back on the troposphere causing the NAO to be more positive in the winters after eruptions. Maybe the 3 large eruptions in recent decades and the lack of eruptions between 1920 and 1960 is a factor.

2156.txt, October 2000, Stephen Schneider to TAR colleagues working at the last minute on the WG2 SPM.

Now, as to the problem of medium confidence on indifferent
outcomes–which have 50% chances if we knew nothing, let me repeat what i
said in my last e-mail to all of you–which was a repeat of the guidance
paper and many previous reviews few of us ever have the time to fully
read:
Tim [Carter], you are indeed right that medium confidence means indifference to more or less
since 50% is the random event. THis is why both in umpteen e-mail reviews
of SPMs and TSs (as well as in the guidance paper) I have tried–mostly in
vain–to get people to make positive assertions without qualifiers like
could. Then medium confidence has much more meaning. For instance,
your table goes at least half way–you do specify the year and rough
climate scenario. The best thing would be to make a real estimate of what
might happen then–like the 10% ncrease in hurricane intensity–or give a
range, say, temperature will increase by 2-4 deg C. Then a medium
confidence is a pretty affirmative statement of what we think we
know. Medium confidence is true, virtually by definition, when we restrict
ourselves to predicting just dierction of change and haven’t much extra
info to push it up or down. Nevertheless, it does make sense to keep it
here, since the WG 2 assignment is for consequences, and if it is
consequential to have an event that we deem equally likely to happen and
it matters, then so be it–this is represented by your last table with
the impacted sectors explicit. Of course, it would be more controvrsial
and take a sub group months to craft a real range of projections for
2100…

5017.txt Ed Cook->David Frank
“Thanks for the paper as well. I heard about the extremely shocking goof in the
instrumental records from Phil Jones in Tahiti. Frankly, I’m amazed that such a shoddy,
amateurish mistake could have been made by the British Met Office. The skeptics will
have a field day with this paper, honestly, as they should. Maybe the global change
community is getting too smug.”

A specific example is the ice core isotope record, which correlates very poorly with temperature on the annual to decadal timescale (and possibly also on the century timescale)—question, how do we ever demonstrate the usefulness or otherwise of ice core isotopes on this timescale?

I am pretty confused now about my response to Holland, in the light of
Susan’s recent pronouncement on the matter. I have the response fully
drafted and was waiting for opinions from you both – but now, even though
I have told Holland that I will respond , I am now considering whether to
do as Susan says and simply reply that the published information is the
“appropriate” source of further study of the devlopment of the AR4 , and
that I now consider it “inappropriate” for me to comment in any further
detail. What do you think? I rather liked my responses!

Keith

> Keith, Tim,
> CA are getting close to finding what the IPCC figure
> from 1990 is based upon. They haven’t found the original
> source, nor any of the CRU pubs that show Lamb is wrong
> anyway.
> It is really quite amusing reading a few of the comments.
> McIntyre’s about figuring out how Lamb produced his
> error bars should be put up on a wall!!
> #50 and the link to Crispin Tickell’s web page is
> interesting – back to BAS pub. If you have time can you
> follow this one up. I think CA have the dates wrong
> and this should be after 1989.
>
> Also seems that CA readers don’t understand what ‘schematic’
> means.
>
> Maybe you could contact Matthews to see where the reviews are?
>
> I was alerted to CA by Gavin and Mike.
>
> At KNMI all week.
>
> Cheers
> Phil

“No one has to my knowledge been able to get high Eocene
temperatures in the Arctic, even when including 8*modern CO2 levels.
David Battisti has argued that this ought to at least suggest that CO2
sensitivity may be much higher, not lower, than IPCC projections.Of course, bringing up this “absence of knowledge” could backfire unless
one were very careful about the writing. “

“On a thematic note that doesn’t have much direct bearing on the paper as it stands now (but which may be of interest to Keith, Phil, and Mike as well), I have growing doubts about the validity and use of error estimates that are being applied in Fig.3 ….”

If you want the paleo information spread around all chapters, you need people with paleo expertise on each chapter – and more than one person. Unfortunately, most colleagues dealing with modern climate still have little knowledge about paleo issues.

#5131

I would like to submit that the current climate models have such large
errors in simulating the statistics of regional (climate) that we are
not ready to provide policymakers a robust scientific basis for “action”
at regional scale. I am not referring to mitigation, I am strictly
referring to science based adaptation.

For example, we can not advise the policymakers about re-building the
city of New Orleans – or more generally about the habitability of the
Gulf-Coast – using climate models which have serious deficiencies in
simulating the strength, frequency and tracks of hurricanes.

the actual forcing data is a must. right now we have some famous models that all agree surprisely well with 20th obs, but whose forcing is really different. clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer….so let’s preempt any potential problems.

So using the 20th c for tuning is just doing what some people have long suspected us of doing… and what the nonpublished diagram from NCAR showing correlation between aerosol forcing and sensitivity also suggested. Slippery slope… I suspect Karl is right and our clout is not enough to prevent the modellers from doing this if they can. We do loose the ability, though, to use the tuning variable for attribution studies.

I’d agree probably 10 years away to go from weather forecasting to ~ annual scale. But the “big climate picture” includes ocean feedbacks on all time scales, carbon and other elemental cycles, etc. and it has to be several decades before that is sorted out I would think. So I would guess that it will not be models or theory, but observation that will provide the answer to the question of how the climate will change in many decades time.

Martin and all,
I know Franco very well – but he has not worked extensively with the Bristlecones. I still
believe that it would be wise to involve Malcolm Hughes in this discussion – though I
recognise the point of view that says we might like to appear (and be) independent of the
original Mann, Bradley and Hughes team to avoid the appearance of collusion. In my opinion
(as someone how has worked with the Bristlecone data hardly at all!) there are undoubtedly
problems in their use that go beyond the strip bark problem (that I will come back to
later).
The main one is an ambiguity in the nature and consistency of their sensitivity to
temperature variations. It was widely believed some 2-3 decades ago, that high-elevation
trees were PREDOMINANTLY responding to temperature and low elevation ones to available
water supply (not always related in a simple way to measured precipitation) . However,
response functions ( ie sets of regression coefficients on monthly mean temperature and
precipitation data derived using principal components regression applied to the tree-ring
data) have always shown quite weak and temporally unstable associations between chronology
and climate variations (for the high-elevations trees at least). The trouble is that these
results are dominated by inter-annual (ie high-frequency) variations and apparent
instability in the relationships is exacerbated by the shortness of the instrumental
records that restrict analyses to short periods, and the large separation of the climate
station records from the sites of the trees. Limited comparisons between tree-ring density
data (which seem to display less ambiguos responses) imply that there is a reasonable
decadal time scale association and so indicate a real temperature signal , on this time
scale .The bottom line though is that these trees likely represent a mixed temperature and
moisture-supply response that might vary on longer timescales.
The discussion is further complicated by the fact that the first PC of “Western US” trees
used in the Mann et al. analyses is derived from a mixture of species (not just
Bristlecones ) and they are quite varied in their characteristics , time span, and
effective variance spectra . Many show low interannual variance and a long-term declining
trend , up until about 1850 , when the Bristlecones (and others) show the remarkable
increasing trend up until the end of the record. The earlier negative trend could be
(partly or more significantly) a consequence of the LACK of detrending to allow for age
effects in the measurements (ie standardisation) – the very early sections of relative high
growth were removed in their analysis, but no explicit standardistion of the data was made
to account for remaining slow width changes resulting from tree aging. This is also
related to the “strip bark” problem , as these types of trees will have unpredictable
trends as a consequence of aging and depending on the precise nature of each tree’s
structure .
Another serious issue to be considered relates to the fact that the PC1 time series in the
Mann et al. analysis was adjusted to reduce the positive slope in the last 150 years (on
the assumption – following an earlier paper by Lamarche et al. – that this incressing
growth was evidence of carbon dioxide fertilization) , by differencing the data from
another record produced by other workers in northern Alaska and Canada (which
incidentally was standardised in a totally different way). This last adjustment obviously
will have a large influence on the quantification of the link between these Western US
trees and N.Hemisphere temperatures. At this point , it is fair to say that this adjustment
was arbitrary and the link between Bristlecone pine growth and CO2 is , at the very least,
arguable. Note that at least one author (Lisa Gaumlich) has stated that the recent growth
of these trees could be temperature driven and not evidence of CO2 fertilisation.
The point of this message is to show that that this issue is complex , and I still believe
the “Western US” series and its interpretation in terms of Hemispheric mean temperature is
perhaps a “Pandora’s box” that we might open at our peril!
What does Jan say about this – he is very acquainted with these issues?
cheers
Keith

There is a lot more in this email but it gives a very clear flavor that Biffra seriously is worried about the strip bark data.

This was done under the search term // the Medieval Warm Period was //

There are several really good nuggets under this search term but I have a Turkey to cook!

None of our SST products use any hydrographic data. One estimate of the
global bias of the hydrographic data is attached. The Bottle + CTD is
the most accurate and can be taken as ‘truth’. The XBTs SSTs are biased
warm, even warmer than ships. The ‘SSTs’ from ARGO floats are at 5m.
Furthermore, the ARGO floats have given false cooling readings in the past.

Of course in our SST analyses we still have the unresolved problem of
residual satellite SST cool biases and a gradual shift from ship SSTs to
buoy SSTs where buoys are 0.14C cooler than ships. I plan to work on an
international agreement at CLIMAR-III in May to determine a consensus on
how to correct ships between 1945 and 1988 when there were no buoy data.

I do want to remind everyone that the ARGO data begins in 2002. This is
a short record. ENSO fluctuations, as you point out, can easily mask any
long term changes even if ARGO data were perfect.

3. The statistical efforts (yours, others) to retain more long period
variability in the dendro series have led to greater variability in the
reconstructions, all toward a cooler past in the 16th-17th centuries. There is no a priori reason that the improved dendro series should have led to a cooler past; retention of more long period variability might conceivably have led to a warmer past, but it did not. That makes me think that the 16th-17th centuries were indeed cooler than the hockey stick portrays.

Particularly useful is the Introduction/Review by Joanna Haigh to the 2005 ISSI workshop on Solar Variability and Planetary Climates. Here she comments that the construction of a TSI composite remains controversial, a view supported by the latest statements of Frohlich and Richard Willson on their respective websites. Hence the AR4 Section 2.7.1.1.2 dismissal of the ACRIM composite to be instrumental rather than solar in origin is a bit controversial.

Similarly IPCC in their discussion on solar RF since the Maunder Minimum are very dependent on the paper by Wang et al (which I have been unable to access) in the decision to reduce the solar RF significantly despite the many papers to the contrary in the ISSI workshop.

All this leaves the IPCC almost entirely dependent on CO2 for the explanation of current global temperatures as in Fig 2.23. since methane CFCs and aerosols are not increasing.

“thanks Kevin, yes, it’s a matter of what question one is asking. to argue that the observed global mean temperature anomalies of the past decade falsifies the model projections of global mean temperature change, as contrarians have been fond of claiming, is clearly wrong. but that doesn’t mean we can explain exactly what’s going on. there is always the danger of falling a bit into the “we don’t know everything, so we know nothing” fallacy. hence, I wanted to try to clarify where we all agree, and where there may be disagreement,

…
>>>> Hello Keith:
>>>> Following the recommendations of Malcolm and
>>>> Phil (via Ray), it’s clear that I should have
>>>> come to you sooner. I am now well along on a
>>>> manuscript that summarizes 2000-year-long proxy
>>>> temperature records from the Arctic (attached).
>>>> The impetus for the paper is the new compilation
>>>> of high-resolution lake records that my group
>>>> recently published in J Paleolimnology.
>>>>
>>>> On the tree-ring side, it’s clear to me now that
>>>> I should not have used the series from the Mann
>>>> et al. compilation, and I hadn’t see your 2008
>>>> Phil Trans paper until just last week. As far as
>>>> I can tell, the only records that meet the
>>>> criteria for this study are your three new RCS
>>>> series from Eurasia and D’Arrigo’s Gulf of
>>>> Alaska record. Apparently, none of the Malcolm’s
>>>> series in Mann et al. were processed in a way
>>>> that would preserve the millennial trend, and
>>>> these should be omitted from the synthesis.
>>>>
>>>> I now need to substantially revamp the
>>>> manuscript. Before I do, I want to be sure that
>>>> I get it right this time and hope that you will
>>>> be interested in joining as co-author to help
>>>> guide the tree-ring component of the synthesis.
>>>> I see that you have posted the Phil Trans data
>>>> on your website, but would much prefer to have
>>>> your involvement before using the data.
…

5) I am not sure whether it is wise to add me to the CA list, just because the reviewer
is supposed to be impartial and a CA loses that appearance of impartiality if he has now
been included as a CA – may want to check with Susan S. on this one to be sure – still
happy to provide advice

7) I am a little unhappy with the emphasis on hemispheric warmth – lets face it, almost
all of the long records are from 30-90N – the question is: how representative is 30-90N
to the rest of the world? for the 20th c. one can do correlations with the instrumental
record, but co2 has almost certainly increased the correlation scale beyond what it was
preanthropogenic. you could correlate with quelcaya – not sure how many other records
there are that are annual resolution – in the tropics I have produced a tropical
composite (corals + Quelc.) but it only goes back to ~1780 – corals just don’t live v
long – in that interval at least the agreement is satisfactory with the mid latitude
reconstruction but there is only 100 years extra of independent information beyond the
instrumental record…THIS MAY NEED TO BE ADDRESSEDAS A GENERAL ISSUE SOMEWHERE
(SHORTLY) IN YOUR DOC

Dear Peck, Eystein and Tom
At this point we thought it was important to review where we think we are with the MWP
Figure.
First, we have no objection to a Figure . Our only concerns have been that we should
1/… be clear what we wish this Figure to illustrate (in the specific context of the
MWP box) – note that this is very different from trying to produce a Figure in such a
way as to bias what it says (I am not suggesting that we are, but we have to guard
against any later charge that we did this). We say this because there are intonations in
some of Peck’s previous messages that he wishes to “nail” the MWP – i.e. this could be
interpreted as trying to say there was no such thing, and

SORRY TO SCARE YOU. I **ABSOLUTELY** AGREE THAT WE MUST AVOID ANY BIAS OR PERCEPTION OF
BIAS. MY COMMENT ON “NAILING” WAS MADE TO MEAN THAT ININFORMED PEOPLE KEEPING COMING
BACK TO THE MWP, AND DESCRIBING IT FOR WHAT I BELIEVE IT WASN’T. OUR JOB IS TO MAKE IT
CLEAR WHAT IT WAS WITHIN THE LIMITS OF THE DATA. IF THE DATA ARE NOT CLEAR, THEN WE HAVE
TO BE NOT CLEAR. THAT SAID, I THINK TOM’S FIGURE CAPTURED WHAT I HAVE SENSED IS THE MWP
FOR A LONG TIME, AND BASED ON OTHER SOURCES OF INFO – INCLUDING KEITH’S PROSE. THE IDEA
OF A FIGURE, IS THAT FIGURES CAN BE MORE COMPELLING AND CONNECT BETTER THAN TEXT. ALSO,
THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO LOOK AT THE MWP, AND AS LONG AS WE DON’T INTRODUCE BIAS OR
ANYTHING ELSE THAT WILL DILUTE THE MESSAGE IN THE END, THE IDEA IS TO SHOW THE MWP IN
MORE WAYS THAN TWO (THAT IS, THE EXISTING FIGS IN THE TEXT THAT KEITH AND TIM MADE).

In Briffa et al. (1992) the standardisation procedure was revised
by first aligning all core segments by their relative age, then averaging
them (i.e. all values of the first year in each segment (t1) were averaged,
then all values of t2 etc…. to tn.; this assumes that in each segment
sampled, t1 was at (or very close to) the center [pith?] of the tree). The
resulting ‘regional curve’ then provided a target for deriving a mean growth
function which could be applied to all of the individual core segments,
regardless of length (Figure 10.11). Averaging together the core segments,
standardised in this way by the regional curve, produced the record shown in
Figure 10.10b. This has far more low frequency information than the record
produced from individually standardised cores (Figure 10.10c) and retains
many of the characteristics seen in the original data. From this series,
low growth from the late 1500s to the early 1800s is clearly seen,
corresponding to other European records which record a “Little Ice Age”
during this interval. Also seen is a period of enhanced growth from
~950-1100 A.D., during a period which Lamb (1965) characterised as the
“Medieval Warm Epoch”. It is apparent from a comparison of Figures 10.9b
and 10.9c that any conclusions drawn about which were the warmest or coldest
years and decades of the past can be greatly altered by the standardisation
procedure employed. All of the high frequency variance of Figure 10.10c is
still represented in the record produced by regional curve standardisation
(Figure 10.10b) but potentially important climatic information at lower
frequencies is also retained. The problem of extracting low frequency
climatic information from long composite records made up of many individual
short segments is addressed explicitly by Cook et al. (1995) who refer to
this as the ‘segment length curse’! Although it is of particular concern in
dendroclimatology, it is in fact an important problem in all long-term
paleoclimatic reconstructions which utilise limited duration records (e.g.
historical data, composite coral records etc) yet it has received relatively
little attention in the literature so far.

As mentioned by Buffy on the Climategate II Tools thread. (I only mention because that thread was such a good idea of Steve’s and should not be forgotten because others created at the same time, like this one, naturally get more traffic.)

Hi Tom
How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where
energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not
close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is
happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as
we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
Kevin

From the flurry of emails, there may still be some things about the method that
you would have to pass on. I must admit that, having read the papers, I don’t
think there is enough information for *me* to reproduce what you have done.
I could certainly do something similar, and I might discover the nuances as I
proceded. But it would still be tough.

> Your comment #221 in the RealClimate tread was in response to #218.
> > > > This particular thread was concerned with the observations of
> > > > temperature rise and not with the Hadley Centre climate model. The HC
> > > > climate model of course has polar amplification just as every other
> > > > climate model does.
> > > >
> > > > The point was the interpolation of existing observational data over the
> > > > polar regions. If you look at the raw observations that GISS uses you
> > > > can see how little data they are basing an interpolation on.
> > > >
> > > > Regardless of what they consider the correct spatial length scale for
> > > > observations, the Arctic sees large regional changes in temperature,
> > > > which are being glossed over with a large correlation length.
> > > >
> > > > The Had/CRU treatment of the observations simply states that the error
> > > > is greater due to lacking data, something GISS are not honest about.
> > > > There are no EXTRA observations that GISS has access to, that Had/CRU
> > > > does not. Thus there is no reason to believe GISS’ observations vs
> > > > Had/CRU observations of recent global temperature rise when the errors
> > > > are taken into account.

Still, we probably could and should try to do so in updated work. David
Bromwich has expressed interest in working together to do something even
more definitive in the near future. He’s skeptical that the warming is
as great as we show in East Antarctica — he thinks the “right” answer
is more like our detrended results in the supplementary text. I cannot
argue he is wrong. Writing a paper together with him to clarify all this
would be useful, I think.

> >> On Oct 14, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Tom Wigley wrote:
> > Mike,
> >
> > The Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical
> > runs with PCM look as though they match observations — but the
> > match is a fluke. PCM has no indirect aerosol forcing and a low
> > climate sensitivity — compensating errors. In my (perhaps too
> > harsh)
> > view, there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model
> > results by individual authors and by IPCC. This is why I still use
> > results from MAGICC to compare with observed temperatures. At least
> > here I can assess how sensitive matches are to sensitivity and
> > forcing assumptions/uncertainties.

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here
in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on
record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal
is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about
18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather
(see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last
night in below freezing weather).

2) I know you answered my question but still I have trouble grasping the answer. Could you
explain how the global T average for periods say before 1900 can haev a total uncertainty
under 0.2°C back to 1850. This can only be true, given the data distribution in the Rayner
et al paper, if T is an incredibly smooth function of location. Did you really answer me
that by extracting from the recent (post 1950) database data with the same geographical and
temporal distributions as the 1850-1900 data you get almost the same result as with the
full modern data (with an uncertainty just above 0.1°C). This seems truly amazing, and
would never work with the global magnetic field data I am accustomed to work on. Yet it
does not seem to me that climate varies as slowly and with as long spatial scales as the
magnetic field…

Bonus comment

I also told him where he can get station data at
NCDC and GISS (as I took a decision ages ago not to release our station data,
mainly because of McIntyre).

p46-47 The 2 deg C limit is talked about by a lot within Europe. It is never
defined though what it means. Is it 2 deg C for the globe or for Europe?
Also when is/was the base against which the 2 deg C is calculated from?
I know you don’t know the answer, but I don’t either!

Relating forcing to response, the sensitivity from the models is then on the order of
0.6°C/ Wm^-2 (or higher, depending on the model used); the sensitivity from the
observations, if taken at face value, would be considerably less.

D et al – Please write all emails as though they will be made public……

…..(5) McIntyre wrote to me to request the annual data series that we used to calculate the
10-year mean values (10-year means were up on the NOAA site the same AM as the paper was
published). The only “non-published” data are the annual series from the ice cores
(Agassiz, Dye-3, NGRIP, and Renland). We stated this in the footnote, but it does
stretch our assertion that all of the data are available publicly. Bo: How do you want
to proceed? Should I forward the annual data to McIntyre?
Please let me — better yet, the entire group — know whether you think we should post a
revision on RealScience, and whether we should include a reply to other criticism (1
through 5 above). I’m also thinking that I should write to Ojala and Tiljander directly
to apologize for inadvertently reversing their data.
Other thoughts or advise?
Darrell
On Sep 4, 2009, at 5:24 PM, Nick McKay wrote:

The Korttajarvi record was oriented in the reconstruction in the way that McIntyre said.
I took a look at the original reference – the temperature proxy we looked at is x-ray
density, which the author interprets to be inversely related to temperature. We had
higher values as warmer in the reconstruction, so it looks to me like we got it wrong,
unless we decided to reinterpret the record which I don’t remember. Darrell, does this
sound right to you?

(4) Other reconstructions show similar shape (though not magnitude) and support similar
conclusions (regarding the unprecedented nature of recent warmth/warming trend). This
is the main argument to make, as you thought. Some of these other reconstructions do
not include these bristlecones (e.g. Briffa, 2000; Crowley et al., 2003; Moberg et al.,
2005; Briffa et al., 2001). Crowely and Moberg use different Bristlecone records I
think. Other reconstructions do use the same Bristlecone pines (e.g., Mann and Jones,
2004). BUT the critical thing is that the studies either do not use these Bristlecone
pines, or if they do use them, then they give them much more similar weighting to the
other records used. I think MBH1999 is the only one that might give them a dominant
weighting.

Much discussion of uncertainties in calculating / projecting glacial melt:

“n p. 677 it says
that ‘we cannot use the 21st century rate to deduce that there is a time by
which all glacier mass will have disappeared’. A generous person might
interpret this as saying that the formula used to get the 21st century rates
cannot be used beyond the 21st century. Do you know if there is a clearer
statement than this”

“I’m sorry to keep on about this, but I am really searching for a way
to get more sensible long term results. The best I can do, I think, is
replace the TAR GSIC formula by one that agrees up to 2100 and then
has an asymptotic (very large warming) melt of 50+/-10cm. This would
at least be consistent with the TAR, and avoid the TAR’s internal
inconsistencies. This is very ad hoc, but I need to get this done soon
and I can’t wait for an AR4 result because that would defeat the whole
purpose of what I am doing.”

Dear Rupert and Andrew, Sexing-up evidence is so easy to do, isn’t it?

Reading your letter in the EDP today makes me wonder who your source inside the Tyndall Centre was supplying you with such exaggerated evidence? Surely it wasn’t me, was it?

Treating Dick Lindzen with the esteem of flat- earthers; could this claim have been inserted by politicians seeking to make a dramatic point to their audience? Or was it really what the experts in the Tyndall Centre think?

Perhaps we need an enquiry. Don’t worry – I’m not thinking of committing suicide should I be exposed as the source of this story; but then again, it couldn’t have been me, could it? I didn’t say that after all; all I said was that we are well aware of Dick Lindzen and his arguments (in fact, Dick Lindzen is a pretty smart meteorologist who just takes a more cautious view of the scientific evidence for human causes of global warming; similar in caution in some ways to David Kelly even).

Yes, sexing-up is so easy to do.

Be warned.
Mike”

Reply:

“Dear Mike,

On behalf of Rupert and myself, first, we would like to apologise. We appreciate the witty approach of your email, but also acknowledge the seriousness of its message.

We clearly want anything which bears our names to be fully in line with the scientific evidence, and not to offend or embarrass you and other colleagues at UEA.

We did contact you to try and make sure that we were in line with credible science and Tyndall views. We weren’t trying to quote you, or Tyndall, but rather make the point that the vast majority of climatologists do support climate change as real … then draw in the local context by mentioning Tyndall.

In retrospect, the flat-earthers sentence, was slightly amusing, but not very helpful.

We are sorry if it seems we were making a more direct connection to Tyndall (ie quoting you in some way). Another part of the letter did make good points about the costs of Kyoto implementation, using in part the reference which you gave us.

We feel passionately about this issue, as we are sure you do too. It’s very important locally, particularly with CRed just started, that climate change is taken seriously, and in time that this is reflected in local and national policy.

In this, we are all working to the same end, so we hope that we can support each other in the future. We regret any rifts over this letter, and to help mend and avoid this for the future, can we suggest that we may ask you, or Asher, to check any similar letter in the future?

By the way, we copied you on the draft sent to EDP on Sunday morning. If you had alerted us earlier to your concerns, then we would considered recalling the letter for amendment (which we think EDP would have accepted up to about yesterday afternoon).

With best wishes Andrew (and Rupert)”

Reply from Hulme:

“Thanks Andrew (and Rupert) for your apology.

I feel passionate about many things, including scientists who trash good sound evidence about global warming and also about non-scientists who reduce complex messages to simple one-liners.

I know I don’t always get it right and that some communication media are particularly difficult to use for educating, dialoguing and listening, which in the end is what it is all about to help people critically reflect on their own attitudes and behaviour.

Anyway let’s draw a line under this one. I just hope Dick Lindzen doesn’t read the EDP at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts! Then I really would have some explaining to do.

Why is it raining so much here? New York has just surpassed the June 1903 record of ~10inches, and it’s only June 22nd….right now it’s teeming down…could be a monsoon. No doubt global warming must have something to do with it…or that cut-off Low that’s stuck here…”

Reply from Briffa:

“I believe you criticised the inclusion of the 2000 (Eurasian ) tree-ring series (since reiterated by Malcolm). Fair enough , though again misguided in my opinion if on the basis of “contains few data ” or ” has weak climate response” . I was perfectly happy to drop it ( I never suggested its inclusion in the first place), but I find it somewhat ironic that it should be replaced with the latest (Mann and Jones) series that contains the same three series plus a mixture of other far more dubious (not to say bad ) series</b –

I agree with the remarks you made re some of these (particularly the Chinese series) in your recent email to someone. I consider that this new series (plus the illustration of the Western US series in the EOS) piece will “stimulate further discussion ” in the field , both between we palaeo-types and the Sceptics.

I and Tim have been left to submit this and the balance of pressure seems to be to submit as is – if we remove the suspicious Chinese series we would have to delay things further (Ellen is hassling for us to submit) and , anyway, it is still contained in the Long series.

I am of the opinion that the points made in the piece still stand – and by signing on, we are not individually sanctioning all the curves or data used in the illustrations ( There are genuine problems with ALL of them).

We will therefore , add Malcolm’s name and submit the version we now have. Hope this OK with all.

Finally, Mike and I have been asked (by Lennart Bengtsson) to present a paper at the CLIVAR/PAGES Conference next year in Baltimore [1]http://www.clivar2004.[2]org. Our bit is about the climate (Global /Hemisphere ) of the instrumental period , but I take this to be the last 1000 years . We will be asking our co conspirators (ie the EOS list) to be joint contributors (though Peck is presenting another similar subject (longer period) paper – the precise balance between these time scales needs to be struck yet).

Also I am organising a session at a European Community Conference to be held next year in Holland – my session is “How warm was the Medieval period in the context of the late Holocene” and although I will probably not be asking you (or me!) to present one of the two invited papers (but I might end up asking you) I hope and expect that you, and the rest ,to agree to be authors of one of them. I hope you will be able to ? I believe you are writing a paper with Malcolm and Henry on the MWP? Can you give me an idea of its scope ?”

Hope I’m not seen as monopolizing the thread or anything. My method is to pick a random email and post. I didn’t think there would be this many…really, there are random (using Excel to spit out a number), and I’m getting 3 or 4 out of every 5 as either appropriate for this thread or Tahiti…

And the normal caveat: I have no idea if any of this truly means a private believe contradicting a public opinion. I’ll leave it to others to search through the final produce to see if the comments were taken into account (which I believe is the point of this exercise).

I was away late last week and did not have a chance to look at the
newsletter article until today. A few comments on the coral section, if
it isn’t too late –

– The comment on Urvina Bay implies that the reef from which the
published long record came was destroyed in 1982 – in fact that reef
was uplifted tectonically (above sea level) in 1954 or so….
additional living corals from the Bay itself may have been killed by
that event however. Maybe better to say that the 1982-3 ENSO event
caused coral mortality throughout the Galapagos. We saw this clearly in
a 1989 visit.

– Recent studies are confirming that corals and other calcifying marine
organisms are under geochemical threat from rising CO2. As atmospheric
CO2 increases, oceanic CO2 rises and carbonate drops, making the oceans
more acidic and removing the CO3 needed for skeletal formation.
Carbonate supersaturation is maintained, but even a drop in the
supersaturation level appears to influence the ability of corals and
other organisms to form calcium carbonate skeletons (Marubini and
Atkinson 1999; Kleypas et al. 1999; Langdon et al. 2000). This effect
is strictly a geochemical phenomenon – it is not a consequence of how
much the oceans warm or whether circulation changes. It is likely to
augment additional stresses currently affecting coral reefs,
particularly where CO3 is already naturally low.

– Corals are also under threat from more localized stresses. Dynamite
and cyanide fishing, nutrient overloading, the disruption of grazing
fish populations (which allow algal overgrowth), coastal pollution, and
unregulated development all contribute to coral mortality, particularly
in populated regions of the tropics. The combination of these
localized stresses with background warming and increasing CO2 means
that corals are experiencing multiple stresses on many fronts –
physical, ecological, geochemical – and are increasingly vulnerable to
mass mortality.

– on the Moore et al. citation – I read this paper; thanks for sending
it Keith. The message of your paper is clear – teleconnections with
this site can change through time, even reverse. So how do you go from
that conclusion to saying that it provides a record of ENSO? It sounds
like you are trying to have it both ways…. you can’t reconstruct ENSO
unless you know what direction the teleconnections are working in the
past. A better ref for this statement might be Henderson et al. 1999
(below), although this one hasn’t been tested against long records
either….

Stefan, Andy,
In our land-only data the NH was the warmest ever in March, so for land-only NH
the figure for 2008 so far is barely down on previous years. The map for March 08
is on our web site, the HC and also on the GISS site. It is just a month. It is
useful to look at Jan and March 08 in the context of Eurasian snow cover.
[1]http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/
For Eurasia Jan08 was a record high coverage, whereas March 08 was a record low coverage.
During Feb an awful lot of snow area disappeared. It is just a couple of months, though.
The oceans around the world are still relatively cool.
At least March should stop the stupid op-ed pieces about the coming Ice Age
and the 2007/2008 cooling which is just a La Nina response. Some La Nina’s (and some El Nino’s) seem to have a bigger effect on
large-scale temps than others. One day I might get some time to figure out why!
Cheers
Phil

>> >Hi Eystein,
>> >
>> >concerning your comment on the 1470-year beat: I’m aware that in the
>> >new time scale, it is less regular (at least I heard this, have not
>> >tested myself yet).
>> >
>> >If you have two time scales, one showing a regularity and one not,
>> >then there are two possibilities.
>> >(1) The regular one is correct, in the other one the regularity got
>> >wiped out by random dating errors.
>> >(2) The one without regularity is correct, in the other one a
>> >regularity arose by chance due to random dating errors.
> > >
>> >The likelyhood of the regularity found with the original GISP2 time
>> >scale occuring by chance is minute – I’ve done some more
>> >calculations, they are not complete yet but the likelyhood is in the
> > >permil range. I think hypothesis (2) can be exluded at least at 99%
>> >confidence level.

> On Sep 29, 2009, at 4:20 AM, Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike, Gavin,
>> As Tim has said Keith is making a good recovery and hopes to be back in
>> soon, gradually during October and hopefully full time from November.
>> I talked to him by phone yesterday and sent him and Tom Melvin the
>> threads on CA. As you’re fully aware, trying to figure out what McIntyre
>> has done is going to be difficult. It would be so much easier if they
>> followed normal procedure and wrote up a comment and submitted it to a
>> journal. I looked through the threads yesterday trying to make sense of
>> what he’s done. My suspicion is that he’s brought in other tree ring series
>> from more distant sites, some of which may not even be larch. There are two
>> chronologies that have been used – one called the Polar Urals and one
>> called Yamal. PU is a Schweingruber site with density as well as ring
>> width. The PU reconstruction is therefore not a chronology, but a
>> regression based reconstruction from both MXD and TRW. Yamal is just a ring
>> width series (with lots of sub-fossil material, so much older) from an area
>> some distance (at least 500km) north of PU. It was developed by Hantemirov
>> and Shiyatov and was poorly standardized – corridor method. I also don’t
>> think McIntyre understands the RCS method even though he claims to have a
>> program. The ends and the age structure of the samples are crucial in all
>> this, but I think he just throws series in.

> In testing the statistical significance of differences between the model
> average trend and a single observed trend, Douglass et al. were wrong to
> use sigma_SE as the sole measure of trend uncertainty in their
> statistical test. Their test assumes that the model trend is uncertain,
> but that the observed trend is perfectly-known. The observed trend is
> not a “mean” quantity; it is NOT perfectly-known. Douglass et al. made a
> demonstrably false assumption.
>

Thanks for your comments. As to what I believe, I think that both the forcing and the
response are too poorly known to make any definitive comment about climate sensitivity from
this time period, although there have been plenty of people who have tried. That’s
basically the conclusion I drew in the climate sensitivity section, 5.8. (which includes a
listing of the various references that have interpreted climate sensitivity by choosing to
believe that they knew either the forcing or the response).

>>>>> >> 3) the divergence between northern land and global temps seems to
>>>>> >> be
>>>>> >> increasing – both record show the recent decrease in temperatures,
>>>>> >> but
>>>>> >> on land it only started last year (2008)

4064.txt-sitting comfortably:
4064.txt-
4064.txt:Grey shading is a little cheat from Santer et al using a trusty ruler.
4064.txt-See Figure 3.B in this paper, take the absolute range of model scaling
4064.txt-factors at each of the heights on the y-axis and apply this scaling to

We’re
> not supposed to endorse the GCOS Imp. Plan for example. Roger Pielke
> won’t be pleased with this. Ch 6 of the CCSP doc does this and more.

3066.txt- > >remains through final draft – I’m absolutely positive it won’t.
3066.txt- > >
3066.txt: > >As an aside for your eyes only (so please don’t forward this part on to
3066.txt- > >anyone) there may well be a very large signatory letter to BAMS from
3066.txt- > >operational satellite guys that Fu et al. is wrong which is one reason why
—

> My interpretation of this figure is also somewhat different. If the final
reconstructions differs so strongly by using a longer calibration period (in
general yielding stronger decadal variability in the reconstruction) I would
tend to think that the method based on these proxies is quite unstable. What
would happen if the calibration period could have been extended to 1800, for
instance?.

The main sensitivity which is clearly defined by the calculations I’ve done is
that the adjustment of the North American tree-ring proxy 1 in MBH1999 shifts
the AD1000 to AD1800 reconstruction up roughly 0.2K. This is now commented
on. I’d like to look more closely at the 15th to 18th centuries, but I think
this is best achieved by bringing in more proxies — and I don’t want to
extend the scope of this study that far. I agree with you that there is an
interesting and challenging issue about the 15th to 18th centuries, and hope
to follow that up later (i.e. after submitting this).

………So, if the amplitude of scaled
> ECS multi-centennial variability is far too high
> (as you would apparently suggest), it appears that
> it is also too low in your estimates for the NH
> extra-tropics north of 20N. I think that we have
> to stop being so aggressive in defending our
> series and try to understand the strengths and
> weaknesses of each in order to improve them.
> That is the way that science is supposed to work.
> I must admit to being really irritated over the
> criticism of the ECS tree-ring data standardized
> using the RCS method. First of all, ECS
> acknowledged up front the declining available
> data prior to 1200 and its possible effect on
> interpreting an MWP in the mean record. ECS
> also showed bootstrap confidence intervals for
> the mean of the RCS chronologies and showed
> where the chronologies drop out. Even allowing
> for the reduction in the number of represented
> sites before 1400 (ECS Fig. 2d), and the
> reduction in overall sample size (ECS Fig. 2b),
> there is still some evidence for significantly
> above average growth during two intervals that
> can be plausibly assigned to the MWP. Of course
> we would like to have had all 14 series cover the
> past 1000-1200 years. This doesn’t mean that we
> can’t usefully examine the data in the more
> weakly replicated intervals. In any case, the
> replication in the MWP of the ECS chronology is
> at least as good as in other published tree-ring
> estimates of large-scale temperatures (e.g., NH
> extra-tropical) covering the past 1000+ years. It
> also includes more long tree-ring records from the
> NH temperate latitudes than ever before. So to
> state that “this is a perilous basis for an estimate
> of temperature on such a large geographic scale”
> is disingenuous, especially when it is unclear how
> many millennia-long series are contributing the
> majority of the temperature information in the
> Mann/Bradley/Hughes (MBH) reconstruction
> prior to AD 1400. Let’s be balanced here.

“Another problem: the ring density and width in the last several decades are both decreasing which at any other time would be interpreted as a sign of cooling. So why is it shown in the WMO report as unprecedented warming?

…

In either case it is not very responsible to relate the curves to global climate as WMO has done.”

I have quickly read through the Esper paper and have the following comments to make. First,
I hadn’t seen it before, so it is all new to me. It is certainly true that Jan did not do a
proper job citing Briffa et al. (1992). That was a clear mistake, especially given that
Douglass (1929) was cited for crossdating. I also note that Jan did not cite Osborn et al.
(1997) on adjusting the variance in series for sample size changes. That too was an clear
oversight given that Frank et al. (2007) was cited. Hopefully, neither was done
intentionally. I tend to give people the benefit of a doubt on that unless it is a chronic
problem in their publications. The latter issue of variance adjustment is also relevant to
the discussion concerning spatial homogeneity or lack thereof. Am I correct in assuming
that some form of variance adjustment was made to the series used in the AR4 report? I
haven’t read the report closely enough to recall if that was done. If it was done, that
would tend to force the data towards an appearance of greater homogeneity, I would guess,
hence the relative stability of the bootstrap intervals, etc.. In any case, I do tend to
agree with Jan that nothing very definitive can be said about the spatial homogeneity of
the putative MWP until we get more records to look at that truly express temperature and
not something else.

The whole issue of whether or not the MWP was more spatially heterogeneous or not is a huge
“red herring” in my opinion anyway. A growing body of evidence clearly shows that
hydroclimatic variability during the putative MWP (more appropriately and inclusively
called the “Medieval Climate Anomaly” or MCA period) was more regionally extreme (mainly in
terms of the frequency and duration of megadroughts) than anything we have seen in the 20th
century, except perhaps for the Sahel. So in certain ways the MCA period may have been more
climatically extreme than in modern times. The problem is that we have been too fixated on
temperature, especially hemispheric and global average temperature, and IPCC is enormously
guilty of that. So the fact that evidence for “warming” in tree-ring records during the
putative MWP is not as strong and spatially homogeneous as one would like might simply be
due to the fact that it was bloody dry too in certain regions, with more spatial
variability imposed on growth due to regional drought variability even if it were truly as
warm as today. The Calvin cycle and evapotranspiration demand surely prevail here:
warm-dry means less tree growth and a reduced expression of what the true warmth was during
the MWP.

That is my take on the Esper and Frank paper, with obvious editorial comments included as
well.

Here’s Phil hoping the lack of Global warming doesn’t continue because he would like to rub off the smug face from skeptics:

Mon, 5 Jan 2009 5:18:24 am
1231190304.txt-
1231190304.txt- Tim, Chris,
1231190304.txt: I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting
1231190304.txt- till about 2020. I’d rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office
1231190304.txt- press release with Doug’s paper that said something like –
1231190304.txt- cooler in the long term of course, are considerably warmer than A1B-AR4
1231190304.txt- for several decades! Also – relevant to your statement – A1B-AR4 runs
1231190304.txt: show potential for a distinct lack of warming in the early 21st C, which
1231190304.txt- I’m sure skeptics would love to see replicated in the real world… (See
1231190304.txt- the attached plot for illustration but please don’t circulate this any
–From: Phil Jones
To: Tim Johns , “Folland, Chris”
Subject: Re: FW: Temperatures in 2009
Date: Mon Jan 5 16:18:24 2009
Cc: “Smith, Doug” , Tim Johns

Tim, Chris,
I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting
till about 2020. I’d rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office
press release with Doug’s paper that said something like –
half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998!
Still a way to go before 2014.
I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying
where’s the warming gone. I know the warming is on the decadal
scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.

… As I noted, my observations of the NRC committee members suggest rather strongly to me that they now have serious doubts about tree-rings as paleothermometers (and I do, too… at least until someone shows me why this divergence problem really doesn’t matter). –Richard

In any case, if the sulfate hypothesis is right, then your prediction of warming might end up being wrong. I think we have been too readily explaining the slow changes over past decade as a result of variability–that explanation is wearing thin. I would just suggest, as a backup to your prediction, that you also do some checking on the sulfate issue, just so you might have a quantified explanation in case the prediction is wrong. Otherwise, the Skeptics will be all over us–the world is really cooling, the models are no good, etc. And all this just as the US is about ready to get serious on the issue.

Sorry for the delay in replying to yours of 01 June 2007, I have been away.

II have also perused as many of the papers you referred to that I am able to access.

Particularly useful is the Introduction/Review by Joanna Haigh to the 2005 ISSI workshop on Solar Variability and Planetary Climates. Here she comments that the construction of a TSI composite remains controversial, a view supported by the latest statements of Frohlich and
Richard Willson on their respective websites. Hence the AR4 SectionREDACTEDdismissal of the ACRIM composite to be instrumental rather than solar in origin is a bit controversial.

Similarly IPCC in their discussion on solar RF since the Maunder Minimum are very dependent on the paper by Wang et al (which I have been unable to access) in the decision to reduce the solar RF significantly despite the many papers to the contrary in the ISSI
workshop.

All this leaves the IPCC almost entirely dependent on CO2 for the explanation of current global temperatures as in Fig 2.23. since methane CFCs and aerosols are not increasing.

Since we last corresponded it has become clear that 2007 will be another year in which the global temperature has not risen significantly, the 6th year on the HadCRUT3 data series. During this period the atmospheric
CO2 level has continued to rise steadily at 1.9ppm/year and, according to Hansen, sulphate aerosols have declined equally steadily thus reducing global dimming.

The period has therefore been relatively quiet in atmospheric terms except for the solar insolation which has declined coincidentally by the full solar cycle 23.

The paper by Camp and Tsung in GRL July 2007 analyses the last four 11 year cycles and obtains a global warming signal of lmost 0.2K for each cycle. Similarly Scafetta and West in JGR November 2007 identify a scenario in which the Sun might have contributed up to 50% of the observed global warming since 1900. These and other papers
suggest that IPCC figure of about 8% solar contribution is a significant under estimate of a factor which could go a long way to explaining the static global temperature data. It is surely important to try to get this science right in view of the current emphasis on CO2 mitigation policies.

I have just read this lettter – and I think it is crap.I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other “target” series , such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over the last few years , and … (better say no more)
Keith

PS: Already this morning there have been (another) two quite strong earth tremors here in Manchester. It’s hard to see the connection but I just wonder whether climate change may have some invisible role in these events too. B.Professor B. E. Launder, FRS, FREng